Death Penalty News

A special court in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda on Friday sentenced a former Junior Engineer (JE) of the Irrigation Department and his wife to death for the sexual exploitation of 33 minor boys — some as young as three — over a decade, officials said. The POCSO court termed the crimes as “rarest of rare” and held Ram Bhawan and his wife Durgawati guilty of systematically abusing children between 2010 and 2020 and producing child sexual abuse material. Convicting the duo under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the court sentenced them to death for offences including aggravated penetrative sexual assault, using a child for pornographic purposes, storage of pornographic material involving children, and abetment and criminal conspiracy, they said.

Uttar Pradesh: Man sentenced to death for killing cousin in superstition-driven sacrifice According to local sources, the convict murdered his 10-year-old cousin believing that a human sacrifice would cure his ailing son.  A local court in Bahraich has awarded the death penalty to a man for sacrificing a 10-year-old child in a superstitious ritual. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on the convict.  Meanwhile, 2 other accused in the case, including a tantric (exorcist), were acquitted due to lack of evidence.

The Union Government on Monday informed the Delhi High Court that an Indian woman, resident of Uttar Pradesh, who was on death row in Abu Dhabi, UAE, for alleged murder of a four month old child, was executed on February 15. The woman was awarded death sentence on July 31, 2023 and the same was upheld by the Court of second instance. She was languishing in Al Wathaba Central Jail. ASG Chetan Sharma informed Justice Sachin Datta that the woman was executed on February 15 and that her last rites will be held on March 05.

According to data, there were 541 and 490 death row inmates at the end of 2022 and 2021, respectively, and 16 7 and 146 death sentences were awarded in 2022 and 2021. New Delhi: As many as death row inmates are currently lodged in prisons across the country, the the highest at the end of a calendar year in two decades, according to a report. The number has increased exponentially since 2015, witnessing a rise 45.71 per cent in such cases.

Ramandeep Kaur, 38, from Derby, was convicted of the murder of her husband, Sukhjit Singh, 34, during their vacation at his mother’s residence in India in 2016 A court in India’s Uttar Pradesh’s awarded death penalty to a British Sikh woman for murdering her husband with the help of a friend seven years ago. Ramandeep Kaur, 38, from Derby was found guilty of murdering her husband Sukhjit Singh, 34, while they were on holiday in India in 2016. Her friend and accomplice Gurpreet was sentenced to life imprisonment with a fine of £2,960 by the court in Shahjahanpur on October 7.

As on December 31, 2022 there were 539 prisoners on the death row, making it the highest-ever number since 2016 when only 400 prisoners were facing the death sentence In 2022, Sessions Courts in India imposed 165 death sentence penalties, which is the highest number in a single year in two decades, according to a report. However, this rise in figure can be attributed to the “extraordinary sentencing of 38 persons to death in Ahmedabad in a single bomb blast case, representing the largest number of persons sentenced to death in a single case since 2016,” the report said.

It took into account the principles laid down in the Manoj v State of Madhya Pradesh judgement. The Supreme Court stayed the execution of the death sentence given to a man by an Allahabad High Court bench, till further orders and directed to constitute a suitable team for carrying out a psychological evaluation of the appellant man, convicted of killing his wife and children. The directive came on a plea filed on behalf of the convict, Deen Dayal Tiwari, challenging the order by the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court on May 9, awarding him the death penalty. A Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala on December 7 ruled, "There shall be a stay of the execution of the sentence of death, pending further orders." The court directed that the head of King George's Medical University, Lucknow constitute a suitable team for the purpose of carrying out a psychological evaluation of the appellant. The report of the eva...

A man in Lucknow was sentenced to death by the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) court on September 29 for the rape and murder of his five-month-and-thirteen-days-old niece. While pronouncing the verdict Judge Arvind Mishra said that the convict will be hanged till death after the confirmation of the death penalty from the High Court. According to the Press Trust of India (PTI) report, the judge has also imposed a fine of Rs. 70, 000 on the convict, who has been identified as Prem Chandra alias Pappu Dixit, which will be given to the father of the deceased minor. During the court proceedings, Judge Mishra refused to decrease his sentence or not grant any other punishment less than death. While calling the matter “rarest of the rare”, warranting nothing less than capital punishment. While making the judgement on this case, the judge also referred to Nirbhaya and the Hyderabad cases and said that in those cases the deceased were adults and the convicts were pronounced t...

A POCSO Court in Bulandshahr awarded death sentence to three youth for kidnapping, gang-rape and murder of a minor girl student returning from a New Year party on January 2, 2018. The POCSO Court said that it was a rarest of rare case of criminal act and death sentence is the minimum punishment. “If girl students are subjected to such crimes then there will be no meaning of government’s ‘beti padao beti bachao abhiyan,” the court observed while awarding death penalty to the three accused. The incident was reported on January 2, 2018, when a girl student, a resident of Chandpur, was returning home after celebrating New Year at her coaching institute on a bicycle. She was kidnapped by three youth Julfiqar, Dilshad and Isreal in a car. They raped her by turns in the moving car and when the girl started shouting for help she was strangled to death with her dupatta.  They threw her body in Dadri in Noida and fled. Her body was recovered by the police on January 4, 2018. The gang-rape an...

Shabnam execution: All hope on mercy petition The son of the death row convict has sought forgiveness from President Ram Nath Kovind in what seems to be a last-ditch effort to save her life.  She had killed 7 members of her family in 2008. A 2nd mercy petition has been filed before President Ram Nath Kovind by the 12-year-old son of Shabnam, a death row convict, seeking to convert her capital punishment to life imprisonment.  If the President rejects the mercy plea, Shabnam will be the 1st woman to be hanged for a crime after Independence at Mathura jail, the only one in India with the provision to hang a woman convict. Shabnam, along with her lover Saleem, was convicted of killing 7 members of her family including a 10-month-old child in Amroha in western Uttar Pradesh on April 14-15, 2008.  Both were arrested 5 days after they committed the crime. Shabnam belongs to the Saifi Muslim community and lived in Amroha. A post-graduate in English and Geography, she worked as ...

Shabnam, along with her lover Saleem, was convicted of killing 7 members of her family including a 10-month-old child in Amroha in western Uttar Pradesh. A 2nd mercy petition has been filed before President Ram Nath Kovind by the 12-year-old son of Shabnam, a death row convict, seeking to convert her capital punishment to life imprisonment. If the President rejects the mercy plea, Shabnam will be the first woman to be hanged for a crime after Independence. The matter caught media attention after hangman Pawan Kumar recently visited the Mathura Jail for inspecting the gallows where the hanging will be executed. Mathura Jail is the only jail in India which has the provision to hang a woman convict. Shabnam, along with her lover Saleem, was convicted of killing seven members of her family including a 10-month-old child in Amroha in western Uttar Pradesh. In January last year, the Chief Justice of India rejected their mercy plea, stating that the courts punish the crime not the person. Th...

Shabnam and her lover Saleem have been convicted of killing seven members of her family, including her 10-month old nephew. New Delhi: Shabnam Ali, a death row convict in Uttar Pradesh, is on course to become Independent India’s first woman to be executed. Shabnam is likely to be hanged at Uttar Pradesh’ Mathura jail — the only prison with a separate execution room for women convicts in the country. However, the death warrant consisting of the date and time of the hanging is yet to be issued by an Amroha sessions court. Senior prison officials of Uttar Pradesh say they have reminded the court on at least two occasions. The Supreme Court had upheld Shabnam’s death sentence in January last year. She and her lover Saleem had been convicted of killing seven members of her family with an axe, after sedating them, including her 10-month old nephew on the intervening night of 14-15 April, 2008. Saleem is also on death row and currently lodged at the Naini Central Jail in Prayagraj. Awaiting d...

Since 2016, there has been a steady increase in the proportion of death penalty cases involving sexual offences. In 2020, 50 (65%) out of 77 cases of the total death sentences imposed by trial courts involved sexual offences, making it the highest in five years, a recent report by Project 39A, a research and advocacy group in New Delhi reveals. Of the 65% cases involving sexual offences, 82% involved minors. As on December 31, 2020, a total of 404 prisoners are on death row with Uttar Pradesh having the most number of such prisoners at 59, followed by Maharashtra at 45 and Madhya Pradesh at 37. Andhra Pradesh, with two, has the lowest count of prisoners on death row. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian judiciary’s functioning was disrupted, with a major drop in the number of death sentences imposed by trial courts in 2020. In all 62% of the death sentences by trial courts were imposed in the first three months of the year before the lockdown was announced on March 24, 2020. The re...

The girl’s body was found in an agricultural field a day after she went missing on March 13, 2019. It later emerged that her brother had abducted and taken her to their uncle’s house A local court in Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar district has convicted a 12-year-old girl’s brother and uncle for raping, beheading her, and awarded them a double death penalty, calling the case rarest of the rare that warrants nothing less than capital punishment. Special public prosecutor Tahir Khan said special sessions judge Umashankar Agrawal awarded the double death penalty to the 22-year-old brother and 42-year-old uncle under Section 376-A (rape) and Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code. RELATED | TN man gets double death penalty for rape, murder of 7-year-old girl According to the prosecution, the girl’s beheaded body was found in an agricultural field a day after she went missing on March 13, 2019.  It later emerged that the girl’s brother had abducted and taken her to their uncle’s house wh...

Lucknow: A court here awarded death penalty to a man in connection with the rape and murder of a one-and-a-half-year-old girl in 2014. Special judge (POCSO) Vijay Pal awarded the death sentence to Jitendra Singh on Friday, government counsel Vedpal Singh said. On May 3, 2014, an FIR was lodged at the Salon Police Station on a complaint by the child’s father, who alleged that his relative raped and later strangled his daughter to death. Jitendra Singh had buried the body in a tube well outside the village to destroy evidence, the counsel said. The court also imposed an overall fine of Rs 2.20 lakh and ordered half of it to be given to the father of the minor, Vedpal Singh added. Source: pragnews.com , Staff, October 24, 2020 🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com . Opposed to Capital Punish...